Kira's Garden
by Alexandra926
Summary: Life and loss, after the Egg.
1. Chapter 1

**Karen Morrow**

" **Kira"**

It listed her date of birth, and when she died, and there were some other things etched into the grave marker, as well.

The symbol for Halcydonia. The Dark Crystal. A flower, maybe it was a crocus. Probably it was, since there was a vase there at the foot of her headstone, filled with purple crocus flowers. Fresh ones.

At the bottom, Ogden had had it inscribed, simply, " _ **My**_ **Oasis."**

It was hard to look at, it was so personal. And yet, I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. I was a stranger to her. And yet, I felt like I wanted to pay my respects.

Kira had died when I was still a little boy, of course, and we'd never met. In the OASIS or anywhere else.

In a lot of ways, though, she was family to me. She'd been my teacher; my earliest memories all centered around the world that she and Og had created, for the children of the world.

Where would I be, without her? Where would any of us be? I'd have been another statistic, no doubt, if Kira and Ogden hadn't dedicated themselves to education.

Halliday had been right about Kira, of course. She was one of those rare people that wasn't happy unless she was helping. Like Arty. Again, I found myself feeling sad for him. No happy ending for him, either. Anorak and Leucosia had been over before they ever started.

Was I to share that same destiny? Not if I could help it. I remembered Halliday's last advice. It just made me redouble my determination _not_ to fuck this up.

People had _died_ so that I could have this. Daito. Halliday. Kira, even.

"Thanks," I said, patting the stone, warm in the afternoon sunshine. feeling awkward. "Thanks for everything."


	2. Chapter 2

Well, I did manage to find the kitchen this morning, without getting lost. Small victories, folks.

Ogden was sitting by the window, eating a bowl of his usual Frosted Flakes, when I made it downstairs. He still seems a little stunned, sometimes, to find himself sharing his house with the four of us, but he says that he likes it.

Shoto has been back to Japan, for a visit, but for the most part, we've all been too overwhelmed, trying to adjust to real life, the new reality, to think about moving out yet. Life at Og's is comfortable, anyway.

I have to admit, it's been a weird few weeks.

The OASIS is just not the same for me now. I mean, don't get me wrong. I still enjoy it. But I don't seem to have any purpose there, anymore. There's no longer anything to chase. As it turns out, there actually is a limit on how many sixers you can vaporize before it stops being fun.

That's a lie, actually. It's always fun. But there's not very many sixers anymore. Most of them got killed off in the final battle, and those that didn't have found themselves without a job, and nothing to fight for anymore, anyway.

Those days are gone now. I should be happy about that, right? Honestly, I find myself missing the hunt. Back when my goals seemed so unattainable.

But there's so much going on _outside_ the OASIS, these days.

For the first time in my life, I'm actually invested in the real world, and it's going to take some getting used to. Wade Watts, CEO. Dear god, I'm the boss, and it's crazy; it's like trying to learn a new language, and I'm really not sure that I'll ever be any good at it. I do enjoy a challenge, of course, and running a company is certainly a change of pace.

Even stuff like this, pouring myself a bowl of cereal and making conversation with Og, is totally unfamiliar and feels like a skill that I neglected the hell out of while leveling up.

Never mind the thing with Arty. Samantha, I mean. She doesn't mind that I still call her Arty. It's her identity as much or more than Samantha is, after all. She still calls me Z, which is a habit she picked up from hearing Aech call me that, so frequently.

"So what's on your plate today, Wade?" Og asks me.

I look down at my bowl, half-full of milk and cereal.

Oh. He means, what am I doing today. I pause for a few more awkward moments while I try to decide why he's asking. Does he have something in mind for me to do today? Is he just curious?

I've now officially taken too long to answer. My lack of practice at picking up on social cues.

Og's looking at me, all amused.

"No agenda," he says, holding his hands up, grinning.

"Oh." I nodded at him, sheepishly. "Sorry. I guess," I trailed off, trying to remember, without the benefit of my digital assistant, "I've got meetings this afternoon. Quarterly reports?"

Ogden made a face, like something smelled bad.

"Nothing else, 'til then?"

I'm not sure. "Max?" I asked.

"N-n-nothing til fourteen h-hundred hours, boss."

"How about you?" I asked Og.

He looks past me, over my shoulder, and doesn't answer.

It takes me a little while to realize that Arty has been standing behind me for some unknown amount of time.

"I'm kidnapping you for the rest of the morning," she informs me.


	3. Chapter 3

It's probably kind of sad that I'm going on my first real date, at my age. I don't have any idea where she's taking me, but it's a date, right? In the OASIS, of course, I had more attention from women than I could have ever wanted.

But I never truly had the full attention of the one woman that I did want. And of course, Arty being obsessed with the hunt, that was both the thing that I loved the most about her, and the reason that she never really wanted to commit to pursuing anything with me.

Ironic, right? She really gets me. At least, the Parcival part of me. It was a fine line that we walked. She would never quite allow herself to really go for it, with me, while the hunt for the Egg was ongoing, and now that it's been found, it's me that has the problem with focus.

How do I focus on the needs of so many, and the needs of just one person, at the same time?

I have a hard time switching gears.

Just for today, though, I'm trying not to think about any of that. No company stuff, no OASIS stuff.

The car lets us out, near a sign that says Short Beach.

Holding Arty's hand as we walk towards the beach. It's still really intimate for both of us, to actually be together, in person. Every little thing tends to overwhelm my senses.

I've never seen a real beach before, so when we walk down from around some craggy-looking hills to see the ocean, dark and dreary, beating against a bunch of rocks, I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed.

"Not what you were thinking?" Arty asked, still holding my hand.

"No," I answered, but I continued walking towards the breaking wavelets anyway, until my shoes started to get wet from the seawater seeping up through the pebbles. Ocean water lapped at our feet, as we stood there.

"I thought beaches were supposed to be warm and sandy," I groused.

"I'm going to take off my shoes," Arty grinned. "C'mon."

I looked at her dubiously. She's so beautiful, with her hair all blowing wildly around her face. What the hell. I start taking my shoes off, too.

Uh, _ow._

The rocky beach, all pebbles and gravel, is painful to walk on, but Arty isn't deterred. Nope. She grabs my hand and walks right out into the water.

Freezing cold.

What the hell, though? Seriously. She doesn't seemed bothered at all by how cold it is, she just grabs my hand again and drags me along after her.

"Look at me!" she turns back to me, with a shit-eating grin, "I'm _wading_!"

I roll my eyes at her bad joke, while trying not to relive my memories of nearly freezing to death in that van.

It's cold, sure, but my feet feel kind of numb after a minute or two, and I realize that we're just kind of awkwardly standing here in freezing cold water, and suddenly it's like someone removed the blinkers that I've been wearing, maybe for my whole life.

Because I'm actually seeing it. For real. Not just that the beach isn't living up to my expectations, the impossibly perfect high standards of an OASIS beach. The blue skies, smooth golden sand, clear water, all of my preconceived notions.

This, ice-cold rocky mess of dark water and gray skies, the salty, fishy smell of it. It's beautiful. Just as perfect. Moreso, because it's real.

I don't even know what to say, or how to say it. But I want to share it with Arty. I squeeze her hand, and pull her in close, for a hug.

"Thanks," I murmured, into her hair, as it whips all around our faces.


	4. Chapter 4

Aech asks me _all the time_ when I'm going to make things official with Arty. And every time he brings it up, I could happily knock him senseless with a ten-foot lance.

Hey, it's something I've had plenty of practice at. He and I still like to blow off steam with a few rounds of the classics. Now we play them in person, of course, on one of Halliday's meticulously restored and maintained cabinets. Aech won't ever play me at Joust, though. He'll play Art3mis, but not me. He and Arty have been tight since the Basement days, but ever since we got here, they've formed a… what did she call it that time? A mutual admiration society?

My days tend to be full of schedules and meetings and planning, and of all of them, I seem to wind up spending the most time with Shoto. I mean, nothing against my Japanese brother from another mother, but Art3mis he isn't.

Aech still competes as a gladiator on the weekends, and runs his TV channel and also his little secret side-business that i will fully poke fun at here in a minute, but the rest of the time he seems kind of, like the rest of us, at a loss for what to do next.

Arty certainly keeps herself busy. She's doing exactly what she said she would, with Arty's Mission, her little feed-the-world project. (Not so little.) She makes time for fun, though, too. She taught herself how to ride a bicycle solely by watching _American Flyers_. It looks like fun.

More often than not, by the time I am done with work for the day, I'll go looking for her, to spend some time with her, and she's always off somewhere with Aech.

So, yeah, it turns out that our good friend Aech has a secret hobby _even_ _nerdier_ than anything that Shoto is into. That's saying something, friends.

Aech likes to knit. Not even kidding. He makes hats, and scarves, and things, and sells them in a little OASIS storefront in the mall.

He's been doing it for years! And none of us ever even knew it! _Knitting_! Well, he outed himself one day not long after the Egg, when he had a big box of yarn and stuff delivered to Og's house.

We heard him in his rig, with the door open, grumbling to someone that he had ordered _sport-weight_ and not this _worsted_ stuff, and proceeded to tear the person on the other end of the line a new one.

By the time he'd joined us in the living room, the gig was up.

"What? It's relaxing," he tells us, all scowly-faced. (Og and I were laughing so hard; I nearly pissed myself.) But Arty was, as always, champion of the underdog. She didn't laugh. She turned around and asked him to _teach her how_!

So now the two of them sit around and _knit_ together.

Maybe I'm a little paranoid, but I'm getting jealous about how much time they spend together.

I shouldn't be. Right?

I mean, after all, Arty only likes guys. I mean, guys that have male bodies.

As far as I know, anyway.

That came out sounding weird.

But why does Aech keep bringing it up? Asking me about it, being all pesty, asking me whether or not Arty and I are _official_ or whatever.

 _Why, do you want to ask her out, yourself?_ is what I'd like to fire back, sometime. But it would hit a little too close to home.


	5. Chapter 5

"Z," Aech was close on my heels as I walked as swiftly as I could for the garage door. "It wasn't what it looked like."

"Fuck off," I shot back over my shoulder. "Fuck you, man."

How could he even just sit there and claim that nothing was going on?

"Z… Come on, man, just stop for a minute and let me explain."

"My name is Wade," I snapped. "Z is what my _friends_ call me," I slammed the door in his face, and headed for my car, grateful for a moment that Arty had taught me how to drive, and furious all over again that _Arty_ had been the one to teach me.

As I headed down the road, gravel spraying, realizing that I had absolutely nothing with me, not even my Visor, and there was this odd knowledge that there was nothing to stop me. I could just keep driving.

To hell with them, to hell with all of them. Except Shoto, I guess. He probably didn't know. I'm even mad at Og, somehow, for allowing this to happen by bringing them together, in the first place.

I'm done, so fucking done with this place.

Aech wants her so badly, he can fucking well have her. I can't believe she would do this to me.

 _I just can't believe it._

All this time, I thought we were working our way towards something real, and it turns out that Aech has beaten me to the punch.

Well, that makes a grand total of _once,_ I thought, bitterly.

And oh, my head hurts, because what does it all _mean_?

Have I been barking up the wrong tree for _years_? And she likes him enough that she can get past… what he is? Either way, my heart feels like it's stopped beating. It actually _hurts_ to think about them. Together.

Seattle is the closest large city; I arbitrarily decide that I'll stay there tonight.

I'll tell Og that I'm not coming back, not until those two are gone. And if he doesn't want to ask them to leave, then that'll tell me a lot about where his loyalties lie, and I don't want to associate myself with him, anyway.

I'll just stay in Seattle. The company has an office building there; I should be fine. I'll figure something out.

* * *

Well, predictably, the guys at the office were a little bit surprised to see me roll in, last week. But the awkwardness is kind of fading out, at this point.

I haven't so much as looked at a Visor in over a week now. It's strange, going away from it, cold turkey like this. But it's kind of empowering, too. Doing things the old-fashioned way.

No more crutch.

And yeah, I had originally planned to call Ogden, ask him to kick those assholes out of the house. I meant to.

I still want to.

But what if he says no?

I just don't know if I can deal with that too, on top of everything else that's happened this week.

No more betrayals.

So I have neatly sidestepped the whole problem by refusing to acknowledge any of them. That's me, always with the brilliant strategy, right?

Fuck them. Arty, and Aech, they deserve each other, as far as I'm concerned.

I had them both barred from this place, on the off-chance that either of them has the nerve to show up looking for me. When I'm not at work, though, the hours seem to go by so slowly without them. I'm not sleeping well, and everything seems dull and sad, and scary, now that I'm alone.

* * *

Og wasn't barred from the door, however, and sure enough, eventually he had someone drive him here and drop him at the curb. The automated security notified me, probably right about the same time that his feet were touching the pavement.

Morrow had never set foot in this place before; there can be no doubt that he's only here today to sort things out with me, and suddenly, I just want to hit the open road again. Get the fuck away. But I can't avoid him forever.

"Send him in," I tell Karla when she buzzes my office, and informs me breathlessly that _Ogden Morrow_ has arrived.

He walks in, jeans and a t-shirt, all casual-like . Just another day, ho-hum. If he's surprised to see me sitting behind this desk, he doesn't say anything about it. He takes a seat, and waits for me to start talking.

Gonna be a long wait, pal, I'm thinking.

 _He's harboring them._

 _He thinks it's okay. What they did to me._

And suddenly I'm unaccountably pissed off with him, too, and I stare him down.

The silence is deafening, as his eyebrows knit together, and finally he clears his throat.

"Shoto asked me to come-" he began.

" _Shoto_ asked you," I cut him off, starting to feel the rage building in me. Out of all the lousy fucking things to lead with. It had to be Shoto. Manipulative motherfucker.

"He just wants to know that you're okay. They all do," he added.

"Oh," I managed. "Well, tell my brother that I'm fine. Just peachy."

Og raised one eyebrow at the sarcasm.

"There's really no need to-"

"Of course not!" I glared at him, angry all over again at his complicity. "You know, I have a few questions, Og. Think you could do me a solid, just this once, and give me a straight answer?"

"Wade," he replied, looking sad, and grave. "I've never once lied to you."

That might even be true, I think. "Then answer me this. Did you know?"

"Did I know _what_?" he had the fucking nerve to ask, then.

"Did you _know_ ," I paused, to take a deep breath, "that my girl and my best friend were fucking, carrying on together, _in your house_?"

"I was not aware. No." he replied, after a long pause.

 _Is he telling the truth?_

Og's never lied to me before. I'm not even sure he knows how.

I exhaled, and oddly enough, a lot of my anger leaves with my pent-up breath.

"You didn't know," I confirmed.

He shook his head, slowly, and then he took a deep breath and continued.

"I… _suspected_ , maybe." He shook his head, then. "No, I didn't really have any real reason to think," he corrected himself, as though he were thinking aloud, rambling. "But they spent a lot of time together," he conceded, "and lately it had seemed as though…" he trailed off, obviously not wanting to recount whatever evidence he'd inadvertently witnessed.

"So you didn't know. But now you do." He nodded, at that. "And you're okay with it?"

He shrugged, and sighed.

"They're my _kids_ ," he didn't bother trying to justify things with an _actual_ defense. "All of you are. And I love all four of you. You're the family that Kira and I never got to have."

I blinked, at that, a little taken aback by the blunt way in which he said it.

"These things… sometimes, it just… happens that way." He was silent for a long time, as though there was some point that he couldn't quite bring himself to make. There was a pained look on his friendly face, and suddenly, somehow, beyond all logic and reason, I knew what he must be thinking, at this moment.

 _Oh, shit._

"Jim?" I guessed. "Jim and Kira?"

He nodded, looking at his hands.

"Jim certainly felt the way that you do," Og admitted. "He felt like I took Kira from him."

"But Kira was never his," I argued. "And Arty… she and I… _were_. I was in love with her," I admitted. "She was in love with me. I know she was."

"I don't know," he said, softly. "I'm just telling you, that's how Jim felt. He felt like we had betrayed him, Kira and I. He couldn't forgive me. He couldn't forgive either of us."

I sat there, stunned, for a few minutes, trying to see the parallels between the two situations. At first blush, it had seemed like a ridiculous comparison, but…

 _Seriously? I'm the Jim in this situation?_

* * *

Well, it was a lot to think about.

But Og's right. We _are_ a family. Of a sort. And families forgive one another. Or at least they try, I guess.

I guess I can try.

 _I don't know how I'll ever look at the two of them._

But I'll try.

Jim said that I shouldn't make the same mistakes that he did. I'm sure I'll make all different ones. But he couldn't forgive, and eventually it tore him apart.

That much I know.

 _Don't wait until it's too late, Wade._

I promised.

And so, after I'd had a couple of months to cool my jets, I packed my shit and I went home.


	6. Chapter 6

I wish I could tell you that it went smoothly.

That I parked my car in the garage, went inside, and everything was great. No drama.

It didn't play out that way. It was okay in the end, but it was probably one of the most gut wrenching days of my life.

Shoto was the only one that I actually _wanted_ to see, when I got home. He was the one person who I knew was on my side right now. And he'd taken off for Japan again.

So instead, naturally, the first person that I spoke to, the very first person to cross my path when I got back to Og's, was _her_. Of course.

It's still startling, even now, to be face to face with another person unexpectedly. Anyone.

But especially _her._

She probably wasn't expecting to see me either, come to think of it.

It was awkward, but I wasn't going to act like an interloper.

She looked as though she'd seen a ghost, or, almost, as though she were _scared_ of me.

I'm _supposed_ to be here, I reminded myself. If she doesn't like it, _she_ can be the one that leaves.

This is my _home_ , and I won't be made to feel unwelcome here. No, not when I wasn't the one who had… _I can't think about that right now._

Doing my best to ignore my pounding heart, and not betray my feelings, I fixed my expression into a mask of ambivalence.

"Samantha," I greeted her formally. No smile, no emotions at all. I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much this hurts.

 _I'm never going to call her Arty again. That's over._

"Wade?" she looked at me, her head cocked to one side. "You're back?"

 _So over._

I nodded, curtly, and tried not to look at her. It was a fail. So beautiful. The lock of hair was pulled down low over her face, hiding one eye again, like in her file photo I had seen at IOI, and it hit me like a kick in the gut.

 _She's hurting, too,_ I thought, amazed that I even cared. After what she did. After what _he_ did. I still care. I still… and I can't even fathom, it's just beyond me right now… I still love her.

It's not over. Not at all.

 _I love her anyway._

What am I even supposed to do, with that? But I know it as sure as I know my own face.

 _I still want her._

Well, I'll tell you what I did. I looked at her coldly, and then I turned on my heel and I walked away.

I wanted to go straight to my rig. My fists were all clenched and it was like it was calling me, the OASIS, and I wanted the soothing numbness of letting something else do all my thinking for me.

It's an _addiction_ , I thought, not for the first time, with my hand on the door. When the going gets tough, an alcoholic wants a drink; a drug addict wants their fix. And the rest of us, we want our OASIS.

Unwillingly, I thought about my mother, then. She was all of the above.

I paused, with my hand on the door, and then I recoiled from it. After two months away from it, I was starting to look at the OASIS in a different light.

 _No more._

Outside, I thought. Nobody can get in my head when I'm outside.

* * *

A few minutes later, I was outside on the grounds, feeling the fresh air, and my feet seemed to automatically pull me there again. It was getting colder, and like usual, windy as hell.

To Kira's garden. That's what it was, I realized that now. I'd thought it was just her grave before. Well, it was, and it wasn't.

There were fresh flowers again, crocus and lilies, and I wonder if Og hurts every day the way I do. Probably worse.

I don't want to be Halliday. He couldn't forgive, couldn't forget. And he died alone, knowing only at the last that he, and only he, was the one who'd fucked it all up.

 _I promised._

I made a promise to Jim, and I never thought it'd ever be this hard, but I promised him, and I'm not going back on my word.

Already, I know what I have to do.

I hate it. I already hate it, and I hate myself for condoning it.

I could almost see Kira smiling though, could _feel_ how much she approved, as I walked back inside, into the kitchen where the three of them were seated. I didn't even have to imagine the smile on Ogden's face, when he met my eyes.

They were sympathetic, his eyes a little sad behind the smile, as I pulled out a chair.

Aech coughed, uncomfortably.

"Look, Z," he began, and quickly caught himself. "Wade. I meant Wade." He held his hands up, apologetically.

"Z is fine," I shrugged.

He looked at me quizzically, his quirked eyebrows making him look, momentarily like Aech, and not like Helen.

I looked at him, silently giving him permission to continue; it was time to hash this out.

Get it all out into the open.

To see where I stand, yes, but this was more than just that. This is me, listening to Kira, and giving him his say.

"I'm…" he stumbled over the words, as he seemed not to know where to start. "I'm sorry," he finally managed to get out. "I'm sorry. We should have told you. _I_ should have told you." He tried to make eye contact with me, but he didn't manage it. "I'm sorry," he said again, finally, seemingly unable to continue.

"After the first key," Arty volunteered, as Ogden's eyes widened.

"After the…"

 _No. I don't believe it._

"First key?" I repeated dumbly. "You guys were together back when…" I was racking my brain here, trying to put the pieces together. I hadn't even introduced these two until well _after_ the first key. So…

 _Wait, what?_

"It was before that," Aech said, his voice sounding strangely monotone. "Arty and I were together for a year before that."

I sat there frozen, certain that I wasn't hearing this correctly. They didn't even know one another back then.

Had they?

"It was over by then, by the first key, it had been over for a long time," Art3mis added.

Ogden cut in, then. "So you guys… just kept that to yourselves then, all along?" He looked floored. With all the time he'd spent eavesdropping, it's a wonder that he never knew, either.

"He was my first boyfriend," she said, looking at me with sad eyes. "My first love. But he broke things off when-"

"My mother threw me out of the house," Aech finished. And unbidden, I remembered that plane ride when he'd told me the whole story.

"And you didn't think it was relevant that the girl in question was _my_ girl?"

"I was going to tell you-"

"We were going to tell you, together," Arty said, then. "Only, I was kind of surprised, myself…" she trailed off as she looked at Aech.

"I should have told you guys," he said. "I wanted to."

Og sat, eyes wide, glancing from one end of the table to the other, as though he were watching a tennis match.

I wonder who's winning here. It's definitely not me.

Maybe this silence means that the ball is in my court, so to speak. It's been silent for way too long now. Someone needs to say something.

I don't know what the hell to say, so I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

"It doesn't bother you, that he's a girl?"

Arty's eyes flew open at that, and Aech coughed and turned away, looking at the floor.

"I mean, you say you didn't know, before," and this is uncomfortable and probably none of my business anyway, but it's been bothering me and I just _want to know_. "That he's in a woman's body. And I don't remember you ever mentioning that you were also attracted to women, so how do you explain…"

"I'm not," she started, and then she shook her head abruptly. "Well, obviously I _am_ , but I never knew it, back then, and maybe I should have known, I don't know. Maybe I did know, in some regards, a long time ago, back when Aech and I first met." Her eyes were unfocused and far away as she tried to make sense of some memory or other.

"I did know that he was different from other guys. But I never stopped to consider whether or not he actually _was_ one. After we had known each other six months or so, I started thinking long-term," and she couldn't seem to help herself from meeting my eyes. "I asked him what his real name was, where he lived, and he wouldn't give me a straight answer."

I mean, I had always figured she'd learned her reticence from _somewhere_ , it hadn't seemed in keeping with her natural personality.

All those times I had asked her for information, during the hunt, and it had been like talking to a brick wall...

"I told him my name, I told him everything. I told him about _this,"_ and she gestured to the birthmark on her face. "I didn't show him a picture, but i told him about it, hoping that it would help him to open up."

I had to hold back a chuckle of ironic amusement.

It was _almost_ amusing, now, to realize that I actually _knew_ the brick wall she'd learned it from.

 _Almost_.

"I knew that he and his mother didn't get along, and when…" she glanced at Aech, sadly, "they had their… falling out," she had a look of hurt on her face as she remembered, "He went off the grid for weeks. I was worried."

Aech leaned across and squeezed her shoulder; evidently it still made him feel bad, years later, that he'd worried her like that.

Nobody just _quit_ the OASIS, after all, staying away for that amount of time was plenty long enough for her to have reasonable assumed that he had died, or something awful had happened.

"When I came back," Aech's voice sounded husky, a better approximation of how he had always sounded to me, back then. _Before._ "I told her that I was done. I didn't want to lie to her anymore, but I wasn't ready to tell the truth. So I broke things off."

"I didn't want to accept it," Arty continued, "and I probably wound up sounding more desperate than I would have liked, to try and fix things between us. I didn't know what I had done wrong."

He squeezed her shoulder again, mouth formed into a tight, straight line.

"But I cut off all communication with her after that; I guess I just wasn't ready. And we never really talked about it, not even much later when you reintroduced us."

"Cause that wasn't awkward at all," Arty smiled, and even that small wry smile of hers made me have to swallow hard.

Aech snorted. "I wanted to tell her the truth. We were talking again, during the hunt, and I wanted to…" he trailed off, trying to find the right words. "I wanted to tell her that it was okay, that it wasn't her, that she didn't have to be like that, not with you," he glanced up at me then.

"I wanted to tell her that she was screwing things up with you, playing things so close to the vest, but i couldn't seem to… quite get there. It was too much of a temptation, being around her again."

I had to resist the urge to keep looking at her, when he said that. Guess I know how _that_ feels.

More and more, I'm feeling like Kira did me a solid here, because my anger at the two of them seems to be slowly receding.

Staying away, that had seemed like the safe choice at the time, but now I had to learn how to counteract my natural urge to isolate myself. That had only fanned the flames, made me more angry at them. This was, for better or worse, my family now, our family.

"Shit happens," I replied, too forcefully, without really thinking, as Art3mis stared, and Ogden's eyebrows snapped together. "I mean, no, it's okay, I'm just trying to say," I trailed off, trying to organize my thoughts. "That I… don't _like_ it, but I do understand, or at least I'm trying to."

There was a long moment of silence before Aech finally looked up, met my eyes, and said, "Thanks," before returning his gaze to the tabletop.

"You've been like a brother to me," I added. "I'd have never gotten through the hunt without you. Never. And I don't ever want you to feel like you can't be yourself, in your own home. Not ever again."

Arty did something that kind of surprised me, then. While Aech was apparently still too overcome from my little speech to respond, she'd circled her arms around my neck and hugged me, huffing out her breath in a long sigh of relief.

Ogden got up then, too, and made his way to me, where he clapped his hand on my shoulder, a little awkwardly, but hey, he's new at this fatherhood thing, and who I am to judge who's awkward at this real life shit, anyway?

Then he shrugged, and swooped in for an actual hug, too.

"Come on," I told Aech, who looked up at me with wet eyes and a tentative grin. "Get in here."

The four of us hugged it out, right there in the kitchen.

And somehow, we were a family again, and even stronger.

We were leveling up.


End file.
